WHEN BJD MP Tathagata Satpathy approached Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he finished his speech in the Lok Sabha targeting the Congress, BJP MPs who queued up before the PM to congratulate him thought he would praise the PM. But Satpathy told Modi: “You have been misguided, Mr Prime Minister.” Modi immediately asked him: “Kya? kya?” Satpathy, the MP from Dhenkanal, a mining area, said the Prime Minister’s remark that all coal mining areas now sell coal in retail was wrong. He said even power stations were not getting enough coal. Satpathy walked off, leaving the BJP MPs shocked.

Mum’s The Word

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DEMONETISATION COULD be projected as an initiative that has given the government a pro-poor image. However, it was interesting to see that most of the ministers avoided referring to it during question hour on Tuesday. When Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh was asked by Congress MP M K Raghavan and CPM’s Mohammed Salim about the distress in the farming community after demonetisation, he avoided directly answering the question. When Shashi Tharoor referred to the fishermen community’s plight due to note ban, MoS Home Kiren Rijijju also did not mention it.

New One

AFTER PRIME Minister Narendra Modi recently coined the acronym SCAM, it was the turn of his Cabinet colleague M Venkaiah Naidu to come up with another one. Naidu, who has a penchant for talking in catchphrases, was addressing a young crowd at the Shri Ram College of Commerce business conclave in Delhi. He launched into an explanation on why the PM always refers to young India as the future. “YOUNG means: You Owe U and Nation Greatness,” he said.